Is gear important ... well here is a quick stat which may make you think about it.

If you looked at every horse which had a gear change in the last 2 months (i only have records going back this far for gear) you would have got :

2966 selections
unitab return of 2617 (loss of about 12%)
betfair return of 3229 - 5321 (depending on prices obtained).

Even at the lowest prices obtained you would have made a profit of 8% before commission.

A profit shows by just taking horses which show a change in gear. No other form analysis done. Thats a telling statistic in my opinion. And I haven't even looked into which gear works better. Or whether first time use is better.

I think the answer is most cetainly yes...The real answer is do the gear changes have a positive or negative impact.It is well known that blinkers have in general a positive effect( whether this is a positive effect betting wise i dont know).Conversly hoofpads for the first time i believe will have a negative impact. In my humble opinion no hoofpad provides enough artificial cushioning to lessen pain .As for all other gear change , as with these, i am sure analysis of past results. will raise some intersting answers

I definitely also agree that gear has a significant impact.

It's interesting to note the worse the class of race, the more gear changes seem to be applied.

I've posted it before, but I found this article to be extremely useful.

http://www.justracing.com.au/thoroughbreds.php?catid=26

If you like a particular commodity, it's always worthy to check for any significant gear changes.

A contributor last year advised never to back horses with bar plates in the wet for instance.

If you check out trainers on the R & S website, there is a stat down the bottom showing how their horses go first up with blinkers.

Thanks wesmip1 for again adding some food for thought. You have the technical nous that can only be good for us old school punters.

Keep up the the work and have a cracking Saturday one and all!

The Schmile

Simon Marshall commented during the spring carnival that horses go much better at their second start with blinkers on. It's one comment that has stuck with me and the logic is outstanding when you think about it. I'm fairly sure he was referring to blinkers. This is a really good area to investigate. Great thread!

Did he mean in general, or just 'some' horses?
thanks

I would assume he was generalising

Laying Horses with Bar Plates on horses paying $3.50-15.00 or any other special

shoes ,other than the standard shoes, tells us that they must have funny feet

& will find it very difficult to win.

I have made millions with this plan .

__________________
Cheers.

Since I had a little free time yesterday I thought I would look at BLINKERS FIRST TIME runners at Melbourne Saturday meetings, dating back to start August 2010.

Interestingly, there were quiet a lot of runners (>50). I considered the race the horse was contesting as well as its previous race contested. I also looked at the number of starts from a spell, the horse's age/sex, jockey, trainer, distance of race and pre-post price.

Of the > 50 runners there were 9 winners.

Several things stood out:-

• Forget horses first or second up from a spell UNLESS the horse has had only one career start
• Horses contesting Group 1,2 or 3 races must have started in equal or better class race last start otherwise delete horse from contention
• Horses >= $21 in pre-post market can be ignored as well
• Horses staring in Maiden races last start must have won that race to still be considered, if not delete.

Putting these rules into place eliminated over 30 runners but only eliminated one winner a first starting 2yo. This turned the process into a very healthy profit. Where this would continue is problematical but it is certainly worth looking at eliminating the "dead wood" to get the main chances in whatever way we look at beating the race!

Maybe someone can look at other States to see if my observations work elsewhere. Good luck!

I thought I would have got a comment or two on the "rules" but it seems without a few select contributers to this forum most people just like to read but not add their two cents worth, am I right?

Not all of us just have to feed in data, some of us have mountains of form guides to wade thru. I've looked through some old form guides, abot 40 meetings worth and don't get any where near your succes rate.